Wednesday, May 04, 2011

At Least One Bonehead Celebrating Conservative Majority Likely to Be Very Disappointed

Before we get to the main story, we thought we would share a comment left on the blog. This individual had left an earlier comment that we didn't publish and is now complaining about how we refuse to publish it because we don't want our readers to know how truly intelligent boneheads really are.

We swear that we haven't changed the quote in any way.

god damn is this site full of Pansy wont even post my comment after i make a good point, Are you afraid to make anyone who doesn't agree with you look even relatively smart like hell " herp derp lets just post the comments that make them look dumb BUT if a smart one comes along lets not post it herp derp. "

Yep, you've cracked the case. You are so intellectually superior that we are far too intimidated to allow your comments to be published on this blog for fear that you'll sway our readers to agree with your obviously well reasoned and logical conclusions.

Now that is out of the way....

While many of our readers, and most of the members of the Collective (except Sparky who is still gloating) are disappointed by the outcome of the election on Monday, our favourite fat neo-Nazi is rejoicing in the victory of Mr. Harper's Conservative Party:

Then again, Marleau's fellow travellers are not entirely convinced:

Of course Marleau has an answer to this:

We would like Mr. John Marleau, who is thrilled that there will be no, "Eastener [sic] Government to tell Alberta how to do things" and that Mr. Harper subscribes to the, "More Alberta, Less Ottawa" philosophy:

73.

The Conservative Party wasn't expected to win a majority on Monday. That they did came as a surprise to almost everyone. Taking a look at most of the provinces, there weren't really many changes:

The Conservatives lost a seat in British Columbia

They broke even in Alberta and Saskatchewan, winning as many ridings as in the 2008 election.

They picked up 2 seats in Manitoba and one more in the Yukon.

They lost 4 in Quebec, as they and all the other parties were steamrolled by the NDP.

They picked up 4 in the Atlantic provinces.

So when considering 9 of the 10 provinces and all 3 territories, the Conservatives won 2 extra seats in the House of Commons, which wouldn't be enough to form any sort of majority. However, the 10th province pushed them into a strong majority.

That would be Ontario.

Prior to the election, the Conservatives had 51 seats. When all was said and done on Monday, the Conservatives had elected 22 additional members in the province.

That would be 73.

When you combine the totals of BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, the total is 72.

In other words, not only does Mr. Harper now depend on Ontario to maintain Conservative dominance, that single province holds more Conservative seats than the four Western provinces combined. And those new votes came mostly from the multiethnic cities, including the breakthrough in Toronto.

We can speculate why the cities in Ontario decided to vote for Mr. Harper. Certainly, vote splitting in the cities between the NDP and Liberals allowed some Conservatives to come through the middle. However, one big reason is that people seemed to be tired of elections and wanted some stability in uncertain economic times. The people who voted for the Conservatives in Toronto are not rabid ideological Conservatives in social matters, and it would seem neither are most of the new Conservative MPs from those cities. We might also surmise that the Conservatives managed to finally convince most voters that they were not the barbarians at the gates trying to destroy the Canada they know and love, a characterization which has existed since 1993 when the Reform Party burst upon the scene. Harper has been in power since 2006 and most people don't see him as an extremist (we might beg to differ, but that's another issue).

So here's a question for you Mr. Marleau. In order to maintain a Conservative majority, who is Mr. Harper going to have to try and make happy? Certainly not Albertans. He has their vote. Hell, his candidates don't even need to campaign to win. The Albertan vote isn't going to grow any more than it has. But to maintain those Ontario seats, they're going to have to work hard at making Ontario happy and they will have to continue to be viewed as a moderate, if right of center, political party to do so.

So though our progressive friends might not agree with us, and we may very well be wrong (there are lots of wingnuts in the Conservative Party who may now feel more emboldened by their victory on Monday and might become a little more insistent on imposing a socially conservative agenda), we have a feeling that gay marriage, abortion rights, and the the fundamentals of our multicultural society aren't going to be radically altered. We would also suggest that the desire of the boneheads that immigration from the developing (i.e. non-white) world be eliminated will not occur either, which isn't to say we don't have significant concerns about what the Conservatives do plan to do.

Will the long gun registry be scrapped? Yep, and we think that's very short sighted. Are they going to waste money on new prisons even with a falling crime rate, and are they going to purchase over-priced fighter jets? Sadly, they will. Are they going to go after unions and public sector workers? We would guess yes, and we need to fight those efforts. Will the Harper led Conservatives do things that we as progressives really not like? Absolutely. However, if you think that he is going to turn Canada into a White Nationalist dream, you might want to think again. In fact, here's something coming down the pipe in Bill C-51 (courtesy of our friends at Free Dominion):

Clause 5 of the bill provides that the offences of public incitement of hatred and wilful promotion of hatred may be committed by any means of communication and include making hate material available, by creating a hyperlink that directs web surfers to a website where hate material is posted...

The ARC Collective

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A group of diverse but like-minded individuals, the members of ARC have come together in their common desire to fight hatred, bigotry, intolerance and violence because of the harm these antisocial behaviors cause to our society. In that effort, we will not use or sanction the use of illegal actions (such as violence or intimidation) in pursuit of our desired aims and if we learn of anyone who does use these unethical methods we will report those individuals to the authorities. Instead, we will use the guarantees found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that ensure freedom of legal speech and expression.

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Race Traitor by Elisa Hategan

At age 16, Elisa Hategan was an alienated runaway who became recruited into Canada's most powerful white supremacist movement, the Heritage Front. She was groomed by top leaders to become a rising star of the extremist far-right movement. An errand girl for notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, she was a witness to the illicit activities of an undercover CSIS agent and co-founder of the Heritage Front. At age 18, she turned against the group and spied on them for several months before testifying in court and going into hiding.